AIDS course gives nurses real-life experience

Nursing students expect to be thrust into life-and-death situations when they graduate from the University. And the Nursing School is making sure they are prepared for anything they might encounter -- even diseases as deadly and devastating as AIDS. In an effort to educate its students about proper care and guidance of HIV-positive patients, the Nursing School offers a case-study course on the AIDS epidemic, its social implications, and the care of HIV-positive patients. "My brother had AIDS and he died of AIDS in 1989, and it was a very horrible, poignant, tragic, and personal experience for me and my family," said Ellen Baer, an associate Nursing professor and the initiator of the program. Baer said that as her brother required more hospital care, she noticed that the nurses had a difficult time understanding how to care for him. It was then that she got the idea for a program that would help nursing students to deal with AIDS patients. "As he stayed in hospitals more and more, it was clear to me that the nurses didn't know how to deal with him," Baer said. "I thought that a course like this [would be] something that would be good for people like my brother as well as for my students." Margaret Vettesse, a lecturer in the Nursing School, has taken over much of the classroom portion of the course, which includes three hours of clinical work per week with HIV-positive patients. She said the students, mostly seniors in the Nursing School, gain clinical experience at Graduate Hospital, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Betak, a community facility for people who are terminally ill. "The students rotate through three clinical sites, so they actually have hands-on clinical practice as well as clinical seminars," Vettesse said. She added that a clinical instructor works with the students at each station. According to Nursing senior Valerie Allen, a student in the course, both the clinical and classroom components of the course have provided her with a better understanding of HIV-positive patients. "[The course] has made me aware of the actual fatigue that AIDS patients have and all of the political and ethical issues that go around being HIV-positive," Allen said. Allen, who plans to go in to psychiatric nursing, said that she decided to enroll in the course because she anticipates dealing with HIV-positive patients over the course of her career. "I am going to deal with a lot of drug addicts and alcoholic patients and some of them are HIV-positive," said Allen. "I needed more experience with people at different stages of their HIV infection." According to Baer, the course has been made possible over the last three years by a grant from the United States Health Service. She said that even though the grant money runs out this year, the Nursing School has chosen to continue the course because of its pertinence and merit. "Although the funding ends this year, the school is going to maintain the course," Baer said. "It is an expensive course because the students go to all of the different clinical settings with an instructor, it is kind of a one-on-one experience." Vettesse said that although it is an expensive course to maintain, it is necessary in order to prepare students to work in today's world. "Certainly, you cannot be a health care giver today without coming in contact with HIV-positive patients," Vettesse said. "[And although] there is content in the general curriculum about HIV, there is no intensive focus."

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